Beacon Lights of History, Volume 06 eBook

Chaucer’s own works, especially the Canterbury
Tales; publications of the Chaucer Society; Pauli’s
History of England; ordinary Histories of England
which relate to the reigns of Edward III. and Richard
II., especially Green’s History of the English
People; Life of Chaucer, by William Godwin (4 volumes,
London, 1804); Tyrwhitt’s edition of Canterbury
Tales; Speglet’s edition of Chaucer; Warton’s
History of English Poetry; St. Palaye’s History
of Chivalry; Chaucer’s England, by Matthew Browne
(London, 1869); Sir Harris Nicholas’s Life of
Chaucer; The Riches of Chaucer, by Charles Cowden
Clarke; Morley’s Life of Chaucer. The latest
work is a Life and Criticism of Chaucer, by Adolphus
William Ward. There is also a Guide to Chaucer,
by H.G. Fleary. See also Skeat’s collected
edition of Chaucer’s Works, brought out under
the auspices of the Early English Text Society.

CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS.

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A. D. 1446-1506.

MARITIME DISCOVERIES.

About thirteen hundred years ago, when Attila the
Hun, called “the scourge of God,” was
overrunning the falling empire of the Romans, some
of the noblest citizens of the small cities of the
Adriatic fled, with their families and effects, to
the inaccessible marshes and islands at the extremity
of that sea, and formed a permanent settlement.
They became fishermen and small traders. In process
of time they united their islands together by bridges,
and laid the foundation of a mercantile state.
Thither resorted the merchants of Mediaeval Europe
to make exchanges. Thus Venice became rich and
powerful, and in the twelfth century it was one of
the prosperous states of Europe, ruled by an oligarchy
of the leading merchants.

Contemporaneous with Dante, one of the most distinguished
citizens of this mercantile mart, Marco Polo, impelled
by the curiosity which reviving commerce excited and
the restless adventure of a crusading age, visited
the court of the Great Khan of Tartary, whose empire
was the largest in the world. After a residence
of seventeen years, during which he was loaded with
honors, he returned to his native country, not by
the ordinary route, but by coasting the eastern shores
of Asia, through the Indian Ocean, up the Persian
Gulf, and thence through Bagdad and Constantinople,
bringing with him immense wealth in precious stones
and other Eastern commodities. The report of his
wonderful adventures interested all Europe, for he
was supposed to have found the Tarshish of the Scriptures,
that land of gold and spices which had enriched the
Tyrian merchants in the time of Solomon,—­men
supposed by some to have sailed around the Cape of
Good Hope in their three years’ voyages.
Among the wonderful things which Polo had seen was
a city on an island off the coast of China, which
was represented to contain six hundred thousand families,
so rich that the palaces of its nobles were covered